As the current edition of the Montreal Canadiens — young, creative, seemingly unburdened by the weight of history — holds out hope of a deep springtime run, a fan’s thoughts may turn to how deeply the team and the sport it represents have figured in Quebec literature. With that in mind, here is a selection, by no means complete but hopefully representative, of some of our best hockey writing of the past half-century.

Poor Brian Savage. A perfectly serviceable if injury-prone forward whose only hockey crime was failing to live up to unrealistically high expectations, he achieved an unsought literary immortality in the pages of Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel Barney’s Version (Alfred A. Knopf Canada). “Savage, that idiot, passed to an open wing,” rants aging filmmaker Barney Panofsky in the midst of a general lamentation on the state of his beloved Canadiens, once great, now “effete.” While his fans in places like Italy might not have twigged the fine points, Richler was employing exactly the kind of shorthand detail that places a reader squarely in a specific time and place. It’s hard not to wish that his only book devoted solely to a sport had been about hockey and not snooker, but you can’t always get what you want.

Montreal-raised Adam Gopnik has often worked hockey into his New Yorker pieces and bestselling essay collections; for many of his American readers, his work may well be their gateway into the game. In Paris to the Moon (Random House, 2000), about his spell as a North American attempting to get to grips with France, he upbraids World Cup soccer announcers for waxing ecstatic when Brazil’s Ronaldo makes the kind of move “that Mario Lemieux made three or four times a period after receiving radiation therapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and having three Saskatchewan farm boys whacking at his ankles with huge clubs.” Hockey 1, soccer 0.

Another Montreal exile who loyally reps for Les Glorieux is comedian, actor and screenwriter Jay Baruchel, whose Born Into It (HarperCollins, 2018) affectingly charts a lifelong relationship that has survived spells in places as far away as Hollywood and as Habs-hostile as Oshawa, Ont. Baruchel’s steadfastness is all the more laudable given that his only living memory of a Canadiens championship (in 1993) is dim and fading. His fandom, and that of legions like him, exists apart from the binary, entitled, Cup-or-bust mindset; it is, dare one say it, a richer and more nuanced thing. In hockey, as in life, it’s the little victories that really matter.

Jay Baruchel’s affecting Born Into It charts a lifelong relationship with the Canadiens and puts fairweather fandom to shame.Peter McCabe /
Montreal Gazette files

Hugh Hood’s Strength Down Centre: The Jean Béliveau Story (Prentice Hall, 1970) may have baffled some early-’70s Christmas gift recipients. What looks at a glance like a standard sports bio is something quite different. Hood, a neglected hero of the early CanLit era (see his Around the Mountain for the shining testimonial of an anglo outsider fully embracing Montreal), approaches his subject in an elliptical, lyrical manner wholly suited to the dignified style of Le Gros Bill, aided by a (perhaps excessive) number of period photographs.

Ken Dryden’s The Game (John Wiley & Sons, 1983) has grown canonical to a point where it’s easy to take for granted just how good it is, and what an impact it had upon its initial publication. Imagine a Hood-quality writer who is an actual player devoted to getting the essence of a team’s season (the dynastic 1978-79 Canadiens campaign) exactly right, in real time. And succeeding. You’ll strain hard trying to come up with any book, about any sport, that’s remotely equivalent.

Charles Foran clearly has a way with Montreal icons whose initials are M.R. The definitive biographer of Mordecai Richler also contributed Maurice Richard (2011) to Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series. A vivid extended set piece involving the ovation given to the frail Rocket on the Forum’s closing night in 1996 is worth the price alone, and there’s a lot more. Working the same turf through a Québécois lens is Roch Carrier’s Our Life With the Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story (Viking, 2001). Heavier on the social context than some might expect, but all the better for it, the book does a fine job of conveying how Richard’s cultural importance extended far outside the rink. And of course, there will always be Carrier and Sheldon Cohen’s The Hockey Sweater (Tundra Books, 1984; available in a 30th-anniversary edition with a DVD of Cohen’s animated film adaptation), a true-life parable woven so deeply into the national fabric that it’s hard to conceive of a time when it wasn’t there.

In this Aislin illustration from Hockey Night in Moscow, Boris Mikhailov and Phil Esposito symbolize Team Canada’s uneasy 1972 Summit Series victory.Aislin

The most important 60 minutes in hockey history? That would be the first game of the 1972 Canada-U.S.S.R. Summit Series, in which communism humiliated democracy in the Montreal Forum. Sure, Canada eventually came back to win the series in storied fashion, but the blow to the national psyche was struck. Hockey Night in Moscow (McClelland & Stewart, 1972) was an early literary response, with Winnipeg novelist and sportswriter Jack Ludwig providing an embedded time-capsule account. What really makes the book worth seeking out, though — and what qualifies it for this Montreal-focused column — are the illustrations by Aislin. The cartoonist born Terry Mosher was already a master of what he has been doing in the pages of the Montreal Gazette for decades, summing up a complicated subject with a single deftly chosen, hilarious and finely rendered caricature: Valeri Kharlamov with a puck taped to the blade of his stick, Foster Hewitt struggling to pronounce “Cournoyer,” a drunk Canadian supporter under the baleful gaze of a Lenin statue.

How many times has Montreal won the Stanley Cup in the modern NHL era? It’s a pretty effective sports-trivia trick question. Adepts will know the Habs have done it 23 times, but only the truly clever know the correct answer is 25. Spare a thought, if you will, for the Montreal Maroons, all-conquering in 1926 and 1935, yet written out of history to the point where they’re not even included in the present-day Forum’s gallery of team portraits. (You know, the one in a distant top-floor hallway on the way to the washrooms.) William Brown does his best to redress the injustice with The Montreal Maroons: The Forgotten Stanley Cup Champions (Véhicule Press, 1998), saluting long-lost stars like Charles (Babe) Siebert and charting the sad tale of how the Depression finally forced the team out of business. Brown also wrote Doug: The Doug Harvey Story (Véhicule Press, 2002), a tribute to the third-best blue-liner who ever lived. (Before you ask: Bobby Orr and Nicklas Lidstrom, in that order.)Arguably the MVP of the Canadiens’ 1956-60 Cup run, Harvey was also a born rebel and a labour activist in hockey’s indentured servitude age. Brown’s account of his career twilight and impecunious post-hockey years is a sobering reminder of what happened to players who didn’t toe the company line.

With Gratoony the Loony: The Wild, Unpredictable Life of Gilles Gratton (ECW, 2017), the genial 1970s goaltender and Greg Oliver vouchsafe a view into a pro sports world now irretrievably passed. “Loony” might be over-egging it, but there’s no doubt LaSalle-born Gratton embodies an unapologetic individuality that has been effectively banished from contemporary big-money sports. How many players today would say that they’re in it only for as long as it takes to earn enough to go to India and meditate? The book scores bonus points for its riotous stories of the ramshackle World Hockey Association.

(Note: Not all of these titles are currently in print; however, patient online digging and used-bookstore browsing may well turn them up.)

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.